Disney
Avatar: The Way of Water almost reaches a billion dollars in the box office after 10 days
Avatar: The Way of Water sets itself firmly as one of the five biggest movies of 2023, just below Top Gun Maverick and Jurassic World Dominion.
It was almost a given that Avatar: The Way of Water was going to be one of the year’s greatest hits at the movies during 2022, so the numbers shouldn’t really surprise us. The second entry of James Cameron’s saga has been in theaters for a little over ten days, and in just this time it’s garnered around $850 million dollars in the box office, easily becoming one of the five highest grossing movies of the year.
This also sets the film on the way to becoming one of the only three titles to manage to break the billion dollar mark around the world. As of this moment, that award has only been managed by Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World Dominion during 2022. This is good news for Cameron, since he had previously stated that for his movie to be profitable, he needed it to be one of the three highest grossing movies in the history of cinema. Avatar: The Way of Water had a $250 million dollar budget.
Its success was foretold by the ancients…
“Avatar is unique among movies where the presentation of it is as important to the viewer as the story line,” said Paul Dergarabedian,Senior Media Analyst at ComScore, Inc. “The mind-blowing visuals are predicated on having the biggest and best possible presentation both in terms of sound and vision. And that is great for movie theaters. Because you can’t get that at home.”
Recently, Cameron spoke about having some problems with the production, particularly about its length. “I think there’s a lot of tension about how long the movie is”, he said. “There’s a very complex narrative thread, which is the worst case scenario when trying to make it shorter, and you have a very complex story with many characters, it’s like a domino effect.”. According to the director, the hardest thing to do when shortening the length of a movie is trying to get rid of stuff that won’t necessarily progress the plot, but that are beautiful, terrifying, or make suspense by itself. Let’s not forget that the first cut of the third movie is rumored to be at the very least 9 hours long, so he really doesn’t have another option but to leave things on the cutting room floor if he wan’t to release in theaters.